Fair is Fair: A Love Letter to North Carolina County Fairs

Deep-fried treats, games of chance and goats in stereo — a fond look at fall county fairs across North Carolina, from Shelby to the State Fair in Raleigh
by Tommy Tomlinson | illustration by Gary Palmer

We used to meet at the sow. That was our gathering spot every year at the Cleveland County Agricultural Fair in Shelby. For years, my wife and I and some of our friends would go to the fair every fall. Every year they’d have a sow that either had just given birth or was about to. So we knew we’d have a place to meet, and maybe some cute piglets to fawn over. It was a lovely way to start a lovely night.

This is the time of year for county fairs all over North Carolina, plus the big state fair in Raleigh. The timing has long been tied to the harvest — by now most all the crops are in, and farmers can show off their bounty. Most county fairs have “agricultural” or “industrial” somewhere in the title. In Brunswick County they call it the Agricultural Fair and Expo, just to get a little fancy.

There are no smells quite like fair smells. Back in the ag area, it’s a blend of cowflop and fresh hay and horse shampoo. You can always tell the city kids who wander back to the animal sheds. They’re in sensory overload. Their noses and ears and eyes don’t know what the hell is going on. It’s one thing to see a goat on TV. It’s a whole other thing to hear them bleat in stereo, or to look close enough to see that their pupils are not only rectangular but horizontal. No wonder goats show up in horror movies.

I think some farmers hope the fair will lead others to be drawn to farming life. But I do wonder if some folks come out of there thinking: Nope, don’t need to see that again, get me to someplace with concrete.

You don’t have to wander far until the smells change. Pretty soon you’ll catch the scent of batter dipped in cooking oil, and you are likely to float that way like a cartoon bear drifting toward a honeycomb. When you get there, Lord knows what you’ll find in the deep fryer. Every year fair food looks and tastes more and more like Guy Fieri’s dreams.

When I was a kid, county fair food was mostly corn dogs and funnel cakes. Now, at the state fair, the corn dogs are Korean and you can get them in flavors ranging from cinnamon mozzarella to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. The funnel cake at the Beaver Concessions booth was the Food Network’s choice for the best item at last year’s state fair. That particular funnel cake is infused with Cheerwine — both in the batter and the icing. Just writing that sentence made me diabetic.

Every county fair worth its grease now has fried Oreos, fried Snickers, fried corn, fried pickles, fried cookie dough, fried burgers, fried turnip greens and fried banana pudding. (I thought I made up those last two. Then I went and checked. They have fried banana pudding at the Texas state fair. America continues to be a land of innovation.)
One pro tip for the fair: Do not scarf down too many fried whatevers before going on the rides. Rides at the fair are designed to flip your insides upside down.

There’s always some sort of ride named after mountains — the Matterhorn or the Himalayas or some such — that runs backward around an oval at speeds that don’t look scary until you’re actually on the thing. There’s always some sort of Flying Dutchman thing that pendulums from side to side while you sit in a replica of a boat and make out your will. There’s always some sort of Gravitron cylinder that spins so fast it pins your back against the wall, which is a good place to be when the bottom drops out. That last one is a perfect example of centrifugal force, which can be explained by Newtonian mechanics. While you are on it you will pray that Newton got the formulas right.

I will confess that I have never been much of a ride guy. I’m not getting on anything that rotates my body in three dimensions at the same time. I’d much rather spend my money on games I have almost no chance of winning. The good news is that every fair is full of those, too.

The problem is, you only have to win once to think you’re a winner. Thirty-some years ago, I took a date to the state fair and played one of those games where you toss dimes into dishes. Normally, even if you’re a good shot, the dimes bounce out and land harmlessly on the ground. But this time I got a lucky carom and my dime landed in a tiny cup. The prize was a giant stuffed bear. My date and I had to haul that thing around for the rest of the night. Another pro tip, I guess: Wait to play for the big stuffed bear until you’re done with everything else.

There were two prizes I won as a kid that I kept for a long time. I think I won them both in that game where you throw darts at balloons. One was a belt buckle with the logo of the band Kansas — they were famous in the ’70s for “Carry On Wayward Son” and “Dust in the Wind.” In the Jeopardy! category of Bands Named For Places, they rank behind Boston and Chicago but ahead of Asia.

The other prize was the Farrah Fawcett swimsuit poster that was such a sensation back in 1976. I’ll admit, 62-year-old me feels a little cringy that I once had that on my bedroom wall. But 12-year-old me? He was sure glad he went to the fair.